Mabel Daniels (1877–1971): An American Composer in Transition assesses Daniels within the context of American music of the first half of the twentieth century. Daniels wrote fresh sounding works that were performed by renowned orchestras and ensembles during her lifetime but her works have only recently begun to be performed again. The book explains why works by Daniels and other women composers fell out of favor and argues for their performance today. This study of Daniels’s life and works evinces transition in women’s roles in composition, the professionalization of women composers, and the role that Daniels played in the institutionalization of American art music. Daniels’s dual role as a patron-composer is unique and expressive of her transitional status.
- Introduction
- Daniels’s Life
- A Composer in the Making: Radcliffe
- A Composer in the Making: Munich
- Composing in a Changing World
- Some Characteristics of Daniels’s Work
- Beginnings
- Daniels’s Mature Works
- The Song of Jael: A Synthesis
- Mabel Daniels’s Place in American Composition
Biography
Maryann McCabe (PhD in musicology, New York University, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences) investigates issues in American music and current practices in art and music education. She is especially interested in the relationship among words, music, and the visual arts. An artist and singer, she has taught a range of courses in music and the humanities at colleges and universities in New York and New Jersey, and currently teaches at the Cultural Academy for the Arts and Sciences, Brooklyn. The author was inspired, in part, to focus on Mabel Daniels because she and Daniels were born and studied in the Boston area.
